The rough ride, p.1
The Rough Ride, page 1
Praise for the novels of Maisey Yates
“Yates brings her signature heat and vivid western details to another appealing story in the excellent Gold Valley series.... Fans of Kate Pearce should enjoy this.”
—Booklist on Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch
“Yates’s outstanding eighth Gold Valley contemporary...will delight newcomers and fans alike.... This charming and very sensual contemporary is a must for fans of passion.”
—Publishers Weekly on Cowboy Christmas Redemption (starred review)
“Fast-paced and intensely emotional.... This is one of the most heartfelt installments in this series, and Yates’s fans will love it.”
—Publishers Weekly on Cowboy to the Core (starred review)
“Multidimensional and genuine characters are the highlight of this alluring novel, and sensual love scenes complete it. Yates’s fans...will savor this delectable story.”
—Publishers Weekly on Unbroken Cowboy (starred review)
“Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts.”
—RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)
MAISEY YATES
The Rough Rider
To the heroes, in fiction and real life,
who show up when we need them the most.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
ALAINA SULLIVAN ALWAYS landed on her feet.
It was the thing she was most proud of. Her ability to pivot when things went wrong. Dad cheats and abandons the family and ranch? Pivot. Learn new skills and work the land as best she could, until Fia had decided renting the ranch land out was more profitable for them. Mom leaves, no problem. Lean in harder to whatever her sisters were doing.
But the reality was, she didn’t want to garden. That had been Fia’s solution to keeping Sullivan’s Point open. Gardening and farming. Alaina was a rancher. And that was what she wanted. Fia had plans, and when Fia had plans...well, no one could deviate from them. She had a prescribed place she wanted everyone in and it came from a very good place.
When Alaina was twelve, her dad left. And Fia had held the broken pieces of their family together. When Alaina, the baby of the family, had turned eighteen their mom had moved away too, and Fia had clung tighter to the remnant of all they were, and with the force of her love she’d kept them going.
It made it hard for Alaina to say what she wanted, because she didn’t want to step on her sister’s heart. And the farm and garden stuff was totally her sister’s heart. But Alaina hadn’t gotten mad about it; she’d just started planning.
It had gone hand in hand with her plan to grow up, get some experience and stop being treated like a kid.
But that ill-conceived plan had landed her where she was now. In this situation where she couldn’t figure out how to pivot at all.
This was life-changing bad. Two-pink-lines bad.
The-jackass-ran-off bad.
The jackass she had convinced herself she had feelings for because...
And this was the problem with her feelings. With the way she was always trying to rush in and fix everything right this second. Because she hated being uncomfortable. Because she hated being sad.
Because she hated living in a world where she couldn’t control the things happening around her and the minute something happened that...the minute something hurt she did everything she possibly could to make that go away.
She was gritty-eyed, because she couldn’t cry. Wouldn’t cry. In Alaina’s world it was all the same.
This was all because of Elsie. Her best friend.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t fair to blame it all on Elsie. It was a series of complicated missteps. They hadn’t seemed like missteps at the time, though. That was the problem.
It had all started with Alaina’s ridiculous crush on Hunter McCloud. Or maybe it had started with Elsie’s crush on Travis, which had turned into Hunter trying to help Elsie figure out how to get Travis, which had resulted in Hunter giving Elsie flirting lessons, which had...
Well, when Alaina had discovered Hunter and Elsie were sleeping together she hadn’t been all that thrilled.
But Elsie wasn’t just sleeping with Hunter. She was in love with him.
It had hurt, but really, what could Alaina do in the face of love? She’d liked Hunter a lot. She’d had a whole lot of fantasies about him being her introduction to sex. But she hadn’t wanted to marry him or anything.
It wasn’t Elsie and Hunter getting together that had hurt, not so much. It was that Elsie had lied to her.
It was the feeling that—yet again—Alaina had had absolutely no idea what was happening in her own life. It had reminded her of the world blowing apart when her dad had walked out. She hadn’t seen it coming. And it had devastated everything.
She’d imagined Hunter and Elsie laughing about her. About her futile crush on Hunter, and she knew Elsie wouldn’t do that to her except...
It had put her right back into that dark space she’d been in at twelve when she’d found out life wasn’t perfect after all. And she couldn’t stand being unhappy like that. Couldn’t stand being uncomfortable.
And then she’d started scrambling, to figure out how to land on her feet. To figure out how to make it okay.
And Travis had been the solution.
She didn’t want to be hurt by Elsie. She didn’t want to be hurt by Hunter. She didn’t want to be hurt by anything. So she’d just decided...
Travis was cute and he was just as good as Hunter. She’d invited him out to Sullivan’s Lake and she’d watched him and another one of the hands show off and she’d decided he really was very cute, so why not?
They’d all gone to the bar later, and partway through the night she’d followed Travis out to his truck, then he’d driven around the back of the bar and they’d done it in the cab of the truck. It was fast and it wasn’t so good for her. It had hurt.
You a virgin?
Oh, sorry. Yeah. I was.
And he’d looked so smug about it that it had made her feel like she mattered at least a little.
When they were done he’d gotten a text from the friend that had come with them.
Better head back to the bar.
But she hadn’t wanted to. She didn’t want to go face people.
I’ll...be in soon.
But instead she’d sat in the parking lot feeling upset and miserable. A big knot in her throat, tears that she couldn’t cry.
Then he’d shown up.
You look in need of a ride home, mite.
It had been the lifeline she’d needed.
Yeah, sure.
So she’d texted Travis she was leaving, then taken the ride back home.
She’d had a hard time connecting with Travis after that. He’d been busy working, and then he’d taken another job at a sheep farm in Salem. And Alaina had felt...
She didn’t love Travis.
Heartbreak wasn’t the problem. But she hadn’t expected to have sex for the first time and have it be just one fifteen-minute escapade that hadn’t even resulted in an orgasm.
She’d been under the impression losing her virginity would be transformative in some way and instead she’d felt weird and depressed and not at all more enlightened.
And still very lonely.
Four weeks after her impulsive act, it had become clear to her that if she was bummed about the lack of transformation she’d experienced, her body had a big old consolation prize for her.
And she’d panicked.
She’d texted Travis about it.
Fuck, honey, can’t someone give you a ride to a clinic?
She hadn’t texted him back after that.
The thing was, it was her mess. Her consequence.
She had jumped into...the truck with Travis because she was so desperate to make her hard feelings go away, but this...
This had felt different.
She’d decided to shelve it all until she had to deal with it. She’d hidden her sickness, her listlessness, from her sisters. She’d hidden it from Elsie. She’d plastered a smile on her face and hand waved Travis’s defection.
I didn’t love him anyway, she told Elsie, her tone light, he was just a roll in the hay.
And so now here she was, eight weeks in and her morning sickness was actually worse and she needed a doctor and she...
She had no clue what landing on her feet looked like here.
Alaina Sullivan had reached the end of her certainty and it was a terror she had
Of course, she had no idea what she was going to do. What she hated most of all was how ashamed she felt. Because it wasn’t like she could stand by the events that had led up to this. She’d been an idiot. Oh well, if there was one thing she was good at, it was standing stubborn in who she was. Digging in. Justifying the choices she’d made in those rushed, heady moments when she was trying to fix her world.
It was about all she was good at.
And with those thoughts still swirling in her head, she put her truck in Park in front of the barn. Tonight was a town hall. Unfortunately, not at Sullivan’s Point. Rather, over at McCloud’s Landing, the exact place she would like to avoid, full of all the people she would like to avoid. Garretts, McClouds...
Truth be told, she wouldn’t mind avoiding the Sullivans right now.
She was on the edge of a precipice and she felt wretched about it.
But you couldn’t avoid people at Four Corners. It wasn’t really possible.
The four families that made up the massive joint ranching spread were constantly in each other’s pockets. And while each family had quite a bit of autonomy running their individual operations, they were also relatively dependent on each other. There were also certain agreements that needed to be made as one. Certain things that had to be decided as a group.
And that was why they had town hall meetings once a month, joining the families and all the workers from the different ranches together, and normally she enjoyed it. But then...
How much life had changed in the last few months. Before this, she had loved it. She had gotten a thrill out of seeing Hunter McCloud. She couldn’t say exactly when she had started to have feelings for him. It was just something that had...happened. But the problem with living on Four Corners was you kind of knew everybody. And she had known everybody all of her life.
The boys her age hadn’t really interested her.
But there was Hunter. He was older. He was beautiful. Unquestionably. She had developed a serious fascination with him. She’d kept a lot of it to herself, because she’d found it embarrassing. The only person she’d confided in had been her best friend, Elsie.
The whole betrayal had hooked into so many of her issues, past and present, that it had thrown her into a tailspin.
She was reckless. She had always known that about herself. All the fire inside of her had been so close to the surface since her father had left. Then her mother had moved away. And Alaina was the youngest. Of all the Sullivan sisters, she had barely been grown when her mother had gone.
She’d never slowed down to let herself feel bad about it. If she couldn’t fix it she ignored it.
Sort of like you’ve been trying to do with the pregnancy?
She gripped the steering wheel tight for a moment and took a deep breath then blew it out, loudly. Her sisters were already there, fluttering around in floral dresses with pies and fruits and cakes.
The Sullivan sisters.
And Alaina.
Alaina had always been the horse girl. Alaina had always been her dad’s girl.
For all the good it had done. And now what? Whose girl was she now?
Maybe still her dad’s. He’d screwed everything up too. Ruined his good life here at Four Corners and destroyed their family and abandoned her.
So great, she had all his bad traits and none of his presence or support anymore. Fantastic.
Daddy’s girl for all the fucking good it did.
How was she going to tell her sisters?
Fia would try to aggressively make everything fine. Another burden she would take on and try to apply her relentless, unyielding, terrifying optimism to. Fia wasn’t a cheerful optimist. She was a warrior for the glass half full, and she’d damn well make it all the way full with her elbow grease if she had to. Rory—who was soft and hopeful, a romantic who read too many books and believed in good even when the universe had proven it was only doling out bullshit. And Quinn—who Alaina understood much better—would respond with violence. She’d go on a rampage trying to hunt Travis down.
Travis was in Salem. She should probably text him and tell him she had taken care of it. So that he wouldn’t come back ever. She would do that at some point.
Just to keep it clean. Just to make sure he never wondered about the girl he’d left pregnant and abandoned in Pyrite Falls, Oregon.
He won’t wonder about you. He doesn’t care.
Just like your parents.
“There you are,” Fia said, handing her a basket full of goodies.
“Here I am,” she said.
Fia looked at her, far too closely. “Alaina, are you okay?”
Fia had become the parental figure when their family had fallen apart, and she took it upon herself to make all of her sisters’ business her business.
Of course, when it came to her own business, Fia was like a steel trap, but Alaina knew better than to call her out.
It wouldn’t lead anywhere.
“I’m good,” she said, forcing a smile.
“You’re a liar,” Fia said, looking both suspicious and worried.
She swallowed hard and wondered if she looked as miserable as she felt. Why was she falling apart now?
Eventually, everyone will literally see the evidence of it and you won’t be able to hide it anymore.
“Then why did you ask, Fia?” she shot back.
When the meeting started she made sure to take a seat in the back and as far to the right as possible. Far away from the Garrett clan. Far away from the McClouds.
She could go to the Kings’ section.
Arizona King wasn’t as unpleasant as she used to be, now that Micah Stone had come back to Four Corners and married her, giving her an instant family with a teenage stepson, but that didn’t make Arizona warm and cuddly. The truth was, the Kings were kind of a breed apart. They closed ranks with each other when need be, and they also seemed to have plenty of conflict within the group.
One did not just go sit with the Kings. Sullivans most especially didn’t.
Though, half the problem with the Sullivans and the Kings was whatever had transpired between Fia and Landry. Fia never talked about it, so none of them knew the details. But Alaina wasn’t an idiot. She assumed her sister had slept with him. And that he’d done what men did.
Except, rather than run off to another ranch he’d stayed next door. Which must suck.
Alaina had new sympathy for how that must feel.
Though, Alaina couldn’t see being mad about sex for all those years. Particularly when it didn’t get you pregnant. If she could set aside her anger for a minute, the abandonment and pregnancy aside, she could sit in the disappointment that sex was just...not all that fun.
What a letdown. What a truly tragic thing to learn that there wasn’t much fuss about it at all.
Sure, there had been contributing factors. Like it being a spur-of-the-moment thing. She hadn’t had a whole lot of fantasies stored up about Travis to boost the moment. But Travis was a good-looking guy. And by all accounts he was a total playboy. He had... He’d done stuff. Made some moves. Touched her certain ways. But it just hadn’t...hadn’t thrilled her. And the main event had been uncomfortable. And that was it.
She wouldn’t be rushing out to do it again anytime soon.
A hilarious thought, since she was so obviously not having sex again any time soon.
She realized that she’d been spacing out for the whole first part of the meeting. But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t high enough on the totem pole to be called upon to give much of an opinion. She and her sisters did work on their own ranch, and Fia was the acting head of Sullivan’s Point.
Fia had grand plans for their parcel of land, but that didn’t involve Alaina.
The McClouds had been making changes around Four Corners, and the Garretts had been working with them. But they’d always been the coziest of the four families.
Right now, though, listening to any of them talk felt like torture. And she just ignored them.
Finally, it was bonfire time, and she figured she would cut out as quickly as possible. She didn’t have any patience for this nonsense. She didn’t feel like being social. Not tonight.
But then Fia shoved a piece of pie into her hand and dragged her toward the fire.
